Priyangshu Chatterjee on a rented place he calls his first pad

When I moved to Mumbai from Delhi in 1998, I initially stayed with a friend before I moved into a rented apartment in the suburb of Versova.

It was a standard one-bedroom-one-hall-one-kitchen apartment with a huge garden in the compound and a car-parking space allotted to me.

At that point of time, I hadn?t got the Tum Bin offer and was just modelling. In fact, the six months I stayed in that flat, I didn?t get any major modelling assignments. So the initial deposit of Rs 75,000 and the monthly rent of Rs 10,000 did look steep. But that was the going rate and I agreed.

As for the apartment, it was on the third floor and there was an elevator. The flat had a neat hall with the bedroom and hall connected with a small corridor. The walls were all white and the floors made of marble.

I mostly stuck to the furnishing that was already there. I got my television and music system from Delhi and only bought the refrigerator.

I didn?t do up my place too much. Since it was already largely furnished, I stuck to that basic plan.

The one problem I had was the flat didn?t have a dining table. That was something I was used to in Delhi. So I had to sit and eat on the floor. Likewise, I also didn?t have sofa sets. So the guests would come and sit on the floor. But then again, that wasn?t a big issue at all.

My neighbours, too, were not every intrusive. Mumbai neighbours are unlike those in Delhi who would start chatting up in no time and become friendly in a couple of days. Here, they would let you be on your own without much hassle.

Everything was quite nice about the place except one irritating factor ? the annoying landlady. She would keep coming back at odd hours of the day to take a mirror or a sandbag. It was quite comical and used to irritate the hell out of me.

But since I was new in Mumbai then, I did comply with those unusual requests.

After around six months of staying there, my landlady came and told me that she was planning to sell the apartment and that I had to vacate it.

I started looking for another place and luckily got another apartment in the same building, this time without any brokerage. I stayed there for three years, but my first home in Mumbai for those six months was quite interesting to say the least.